Category: Solar

January 31, 2009

San Francisco is known for it’s fog, not it’s sunshine, but that’s mostly in the summer months, mid June to the end of August. Right now in January it should be raining, but we have gotten precious little rain this January. As evidence I present you with my solar panel production, which shows a remarkably […]

January 31, 2009

Economist magazine has a great article on for-profit activism and mentions both 1BOG.org and Virgance. 1BOG helped me get a solar panel system last year and I’m am still delighted with how well the whole process went. Thank you again 1BOG and congrats to you and Virgance!

October 15, 2008

Jeffrey Leonard writes about The Plug In Revolution in the Washington Monthly. He says: Electrification as a rallying cry for American energy policy isnâ??t perfect, but in my view itâ??s the best and perhaps only way to get us to a clean and secure energy future. I think he makes an elegant case for moving […]

October 3, 2008

The financial rescue bill (aka the bailout) contains substantial tax credits for plug-in hybrid vehicles sold after 2008. This could mean about $7,500 dollars for a GM Volt, based on the size of its battery. Here are some links: Green Car Congress on the senate bill Green Car Advisor at Edmunds If you have solar […]

September 21, 2008

We’ve signed off on getting a 3.85KWh solar photovoltaic system. Return on investment will be 10-12 years, probably less if we get a plugin-hybrid electric car in 3 or 4 years. The roofers will be here tomorrow to mark the joists, and sometime in the next week or two, the racks will go in. I’ll […]

August 19, 2008

The exciting news is that 1BOG has selected an installation partner and the installer will be visiting my house tomorrow. I can’t wait to see what the whole process is like. I have two questions in particular: 1) I will definitely be getting a plugin hybrid car when they are available in 2-3 years. I’ve […]

August 19, 2008

Lot’s of interesting news in the alternative energy field: MIT creates a catalyst based on photosysthesis that produces hydrogen from water. LS9 uses synthetic biology to produce oil from algae. Energy Innovations gets the first UL listing for a solar concentrator.

July 26, 2008

I spent some time this afternoon speaking with various solar installers at the GoSolarSF fair at the Eureka Valley rec center. To say the fair was crowded would be an understatement. I wasn’t able to speak to most of the installers–the crowds were too deep. It’s fantastic to see this amount of interest in solar. […]